


Seeing is Believing

by LilydaleXF



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Ghouli, MSR, Post Episode: s11e05 Ghouli
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 03:45:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13562100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilydaleXF/pseuds/LilydaleXF
Summary: "Ghouli" post-ep. Scully worries about Mulder missing William in an angst-filled, love-lined conversation in a car.





	Seeing is Believing

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks: This story wouldn’t be here without Anjou’s help and encouragement.

The only sound in the car since they left the gas station has been the cracking of sunflower seeds that Mulder bought inside. He doesn't even think about it anymore. Find yourself in a gas station; buy seeds. Some things are very ingrained.

Mulder wants to reach over and hold Scully's hand, but since they pulled out of the store's lot her hands have been neatly but tightly folded on her lap cupped around a small USB stick. Their technique of demanding things they want from unsuspecting civilians has unquestionably been better than today, but they got the job done and have a copy of the video, with another already saved by phone into Mulder's secure cloud. Both of them had tears in their eyes and one of their mouths was gaping open in a surprised "O" that occasionally bobbed about in size like a fish mouth while the other of their mouths barked to the wide-eyed store clerk that they needed a copy of the surveillance video ASAP to bring back to Quantico HQ for immediate evaluation by the FBI.

That's what Mulder said, "Quantico HQ," despite never having said that before in his life and knowing that nobody except fourth rate crime novelists would think such a phrase was remotely in the FBI lexicon. He thinks his mind might perhaps, maybe, possibly be occupied with things other than FBI standards.

"I'm sorry you didn't get to see him," Scully says suddenly.

He flicks his eyes from watching the road to glance at her. She's not looking at him. He still wants to touch her, but now he thinks she'd doubt his sincerity as being prompted purely by her words, so he keeps both hands on the steering wheel. Hands on the wheel at 10:00 and 2:00 is something he would have taught a son.

"I did, though," Mulder replies. Mulder did see him, he did. William. Jackson. Mulder knows he saw him. He was real. He was theirs.

Scully sniffles. "No, you missed it."

"I did, though," he repeats dumbly, inelegantly. "I saw him talking to you outside as I walked out of the store. And I saw him on the video."

"No," she insists. "You didn't see _him_. You didn't see the quiet thoughtfulness in his eyes. Or see his mouth, the way it quirked up when he spoke."

She's technically right, but she's missing something important. On occasion he forgets that she doesn't always instantly understand exactly where he's coming from, how he's thinking, what the true meaning is that's lurking under the surface of his words and actions. He once had his head probed by conspiratorial men and gained the temporary skill of mind reading, and he saw into hers. It's hard not to have unwavering faith after something like that. After precisely that.

He really wants to touch her, but she looks quite purposely isolated right now. Sometimes she can still so needlessly struggle alone, and sometimes he can still so negligently let her. He wonders if he visibly hid his surprise when she said something aloud to him after being quiet for so long in the car.

He's tempted to point out that she also didn't see into _his_ eyes or observe the movement of _his_ mouth, not really. It was somebody else she was talking to outside the store, in a way, but he knows that she knows that. Somehow, it doesn't seem immediately important to explore the impossible changeling reality, nor her seemingly unquestioning belief in it. It's enough that she believes. He, of course, does too. In William, in Jackson, in Scully.

They watched the video numerous times inside the store. The clerk seemed oblivious and never said anything, though neither agent spared much attention for the clerk.

When they first watched the video Mulder was behind Scully, so he could only gauge her reaction by what he felt with his hands on her. He knows he observed very little about her at this time since his ears were overwhelmed and his eyes were very busy bugging out at the screen. They soon mutually shifted to be beside one another. He put his arm loosely around her waist, and she held one arm across her stomach so her hand rested atop his at her hip. He may have kissed the crown of her head. Quantico HQ would have been very disappointed at their field manner.

While watching the video like that it didn't take long for Mulder's eyes to shift from one son to another sun. Scully glowed beside him and held him close.

He doesn't know how to counter her opinion and adequately explain to her what he saw, but he wants to try.

"You're right, Scully, I didn't see those things on his face, at least not well on the video. But I saw you."

"I wish you could've seen him too." Her voice sounds like warm tears sliding along smooth cheeks.

"I saw how he moved, I saw how he turned back to you after reaching his car. I heard the considerate inflections of his voice.'

"Okay," she mumbles quietly, lacking reassurance.

"But maybe more than that, I saw you."

"You see me all the time," she says dismissively.

_Never enough_ , he thinks but fails to add aloud.

"In the store I saw your eyes, Scully, your face. It was like seeing his."

She doesn't respond verbally, but her eyes blink once absurdly slowly. He can tell just from his peripheral vision that she's considering his observation.

"I saw you outside too," he admits, "just after he drove away but before we realized who he was. And in the store, I stopped watching the video and only watched you."

She murmurs an embarrassed and possibly scolding "hmmmm."

"It's not that I wouldn’t have liked to see the things you saw, Scully. I do, and I will probably insist upon a detailed soliloquy later," he says as he turns his head toward her briefly with a grin. "But," he continues with his eyes back on the road, "the protectiveness, depth of recognition, and kindness of heart I saw in you was a direct reflection of him. I know it."

"He did recognize me," she says quietly with an incredulousness that the words really do not deserve.

"Yes," he says with a matched quiet tone. "I'll never forget how you looked."

There's silence in the car for a good spell before she says, "His eyes were like yours, Mulder. Do you want to know how?"

He reaches now for her hands, which unfold for him softly. He clasps one, which traps between their palms the warmed plastic of the USB stick. They hold their memories together.


End file.
